Winter 2020

Panthers and Bulldogs Revisited

Panthers and Bulldogs Revisited

Compared to Harvard or Chicago, not to mention Berkeley, Columbia, or Wisconsin, Yale was a remarkably placid campus during the late 1960s. Most students opposed the Vietnam War and felt an amorphous commitment to racial equality but few stood to the left of Eugene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy. Radicalism consisted of small bands of socialists, feminists, and Ivy League hippies. Even these dissidents were likely to concur in the prevailing opinion, noted by John Hersey, that they attended “quite simply the best private university in the country.” The nitty gritty of New Haven, including its ethnic politics and black ghetto, were physically near but psychologically distant. During the spring of 1970, however, the indictment of 14 Black Panthers intruded on Yale’s placidity.